The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries by Otto Penzler, editor, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Otto Penzler edits and introduces The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, subtitled — and quite accurately, it seems — "the most complete collection of impossible-crime stories ever assembled".

And what a collection this is! Organized by category, the book opens with classics that everyone has read at least once, and more likely many times, due to their simply ingenious plotlines. These classics include "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Problem of Cell 13" by Jacques Futrelle, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Arthur Conan Doyle, and three others. This is followed by twelve stories of impossible murders by stabbing from others as diverse as John Dickson Carr to Stephen King. Impossible stories involving missing footprints, missing people, and missing valuables follow. In all, sixty-eight superbly crafted stories are included here.

The only complaint about the book — and this is really a quibble, nothing more — is its size and format. Slightly smaller than a standard magazine and well over 900 pages in length, it is an unwieldy book to hold. And the two-column page format makes it even more cumbersome to read. Still, this is a minor inconvenience to the sheer joy of reading — and often rereading — these wonderful stories. This is a must-have collection for all fans for mystery and crime fiction.

Acknowledgment: Random House provided a copy of The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries for this review.

Kwik Krimes
Thomas & Mercer (Trade Paperback), August 2013
ISBN-13: 9781612183008; ISBN-10: 161218300X

The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

A Short Story Collection by Otto Penzler, editor